WebProNews » Developerhttp://www.webpronews.com
Breaking News in Tech, Search, Social, & BusinessTue, 31 Mar 2015 20:05:26 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=3.8.1Facebook Gives Developers Analytics For Appshttp://www.webpronews.com/facebook-gives-developers-analytics-for-apps-2015-03
http://www.webpronews.com/facebook-gives-developers-analytics-for-apps-2015-03#commentsWed, 25 Mar 2015 21:05:01 +0000http://www.webpronews.com/?p=421375Facebook announced the launch of Facebook Analytics for Apps, which is exactly what it sounds like. Apps logging App Events, which according to the company, includes over 87% of the top-grossing apps in the U.S., can start using the service immediately.

The product includes insights to help you understand traffic across devices.

“if you’re an online clothing retailer and have both a native mobile app and a website, you can tell if your customers click an ad for your app on their phone, browse a pair of jeans on their laptop, and finally make a purchase on their tablet,” explains Facebook’s Aydin Ghajar. “You might discover that the majority of purchases happen on your website, but the majority of those people previously clicked ads that came from mobile, which could help you decide where to run more ads.”

It lets you look at demographic segments and metrics for them to see how they use your app differently from everyone else.

“You could build a segment of the top five percent of people who make the most purchases in your app and look at their demographic and device breakdown,” says Ghajar. “For instance, you might discover that people who make the most purchases are women between 25-34 who use Android. You could then decide to invest more in your Android app, or run more ads for women in that age group.”

You can look at cohorts (groups of people who took a set of actions in your app), and review metrics for them. You can look at things like what percentage of them launched your app, completed a registration, or made a purchase.

You can also create funnels to see how people move through a series of steps in the app (such as a purchase flow), and see where people drop off.

“If you’re a game developer and your game is only available in Spanish, you might want to know if translating your game into other languages would result in more purchases,” explains Ghajar. “You can build a funnel for your purchase flow, and then look at that funnel broken down by language. If non-Spanish speakers are dropping off at the purchase point more often, you might be able to increase your revenue by localizing your app into additional languages.”

As the company notes, app developers can use the product to improve their Facebook ads. Over time, it says, it can help measure the performance of mobile app ads on other ad networks. That’s launching in closed beta.

Images via Facebook

]]>http://www.webpronews.com/facebook-gives-developers-analytics-for-apps-2015-03/feed0Facebook Messenger Now A Platform, Provides Guidelines For Developershttp://www.webpronews.com/facebook-messenger-now-a-platform-provides-guidelines-for-developers-2015-03
http://www.webpronews.com/facebook-messenger-now-a-platform-provides-guidelines-for-developers-2015-03#commentsWed, 25 Mar 2015 19:11:26 +0000http://www.webpronews.com/?p=421348Facebook just kicked off its annual f8 developer conference, announcing Messenger Platform and Businesses on Messenger. The former enables developers to build apps that Messenger users can take advantage of in conversations. The latter seems to be looking to take over email for business-to-consumer communications.

Facebook is expanding the composer in Messenger to enable users to find more services (apps) they can use to enhance their conversations. You can browse available apps and install them right there.

When you use one of the apps, the person will have the ability to reply with the same app if they already have it installed. Otherwise, they’ll be presented with a way to install it right from your message. Or they can just respond their own way. Apps showed off at the event included ones that let you communicate with animated gifs or stylized, animated text.

40 apps are launching right way, but the platform will enable an unlimited amount of them to bring new and interesting ways of communicating into the fold.

As Facebook notes, this all presents developers with new growth and reengagement opportunities.

“Messenger Platform apps can display the option for a person to install the app from within Messenger, or to reply using content from the app,” says Facebook’s Lexy Franklin. “If the person receiving the message doesn’t already have an app installed, they can tap Install to be taken directly to the app store to get started using the app. This means people can discover apps recommended by their friends, naturally through their conversations.”

“With Messenger Platform, developers may also see increased app engagement,” Franklin adds. “If the person receiving the message already has the app installed, they’ll be able to tap Reply on an image in a message. Then, instead of scrolling through pages of apps on their phone, they’ll be taken directly to the app to reengage and respond with relevant content.”

Some apps will have some nice visibility in a new tab within Messenger conversations. This provides shortcuts to apps people have installed as well as some they “might be interested in trying.” Facebook says to think of featured apps as an “editorial list of some of the best Messenger integrations.”

Facebook wants apps optimized for Messenger to be conversational, expressive, and/or personal, and has guidelines for these traits:

For sharing, Facebook also recommends making your app exclusively for Messenger, limiting sharing actions to Messenger’s Send button and Save to Camera Roll, making any editing and composition tools lightweight, minimizing the number of steps between opening and sending, using the Send button whenever you initiate a send to Messenger, and following its brand guidelines.

For replies, Facebook says to land users directly in a content-creation experience if there is one, display content that’s relevant to the conversation (and participants if possible), and match the instructions for adding a reply flow in the tech docs. You can find all the necessary documentation from here.

As far as the brand guidelines go, Facebook wants you to accurately describe how your app works in its name, and says to only use the naming convention “AppName for Messenger” only if the app is exclusively for Messenger and the Messenger platform integration has been reviewed and approved by Facebook. More on the review process here.

The company says not to use names that imitate or could be confused with its own trademarks and not to claim trademark rights in “Messenger”.

“Your icon should represent your brand,” the company says. “We provide a Messenger Platform Icon Badge that may be used in some circumstances, solely to indicate that your app is integrated with the Messenger Platform. The Icon Badge does not represent an endorsement, sponsorship, or verification by Facebook.”

They provide a Photoshop template to add the Icon badge to your app icon, but warns not to modify the template or resulting icon in any other way and not to use any other Messenger branding or any of its trademarks.

They also say not to modify their Messenger buttons or use any other buttons to share content to Messenger.

“Your marketing should focus on the unique qualities of your app,” Facebook says. “You may also indicate that your app is integrated with the Messenger Platform. However, you may not suggest that you are endorsed or sponsored by us. You may not use the Messenger Logo in your marketing.”

Facebook provides Messenger SDKs for both iOS and Android. Those along with all of the guidelines and other documentation can be found here.

Clearly Facebook is aiming to turn Messenger into much more of its own product by enabling new functionalities. The company also announced at f8 that users will be able to communicate directly with businesses from the app. For example, if you place an order online, you can get tracking information and receipts right in message as you would in an email, and if you need to make changes or talk with someone at the company, you can do so right from Messenger in the same thread. This follows the previously announced ability to send payments in the app.

What once was simply Facebook’s instant message feature has morphed into its own ecosystem. Facebook plans to do a lot more of this kind of thing too. One of the major themes of Mark Zuckerberg’s opening keynote was that they want to let people do more with and share more through the Facebook family of apps. Very little emphasis was placed on Facebook itself.

Messenger currently has over 600 million users.

Images via Facebook

]]>http://www.webpronews.com/facebook-messenger-now-a-platform-provides-guidelines-for-developers-2015-03/feed0App Developer On Designing Apps For Apple Watch, Other Wearableshttp://www.webpronews.com/app-developer-on-designing-apps-for-apple-watch-other-wearables-2015-03
http://www.webpronews.com/app-developer-on-designing-apps-for-apple-watch-other-wearables-2015-03#commentsThu, 19 Mar 2015 18:15:00 +0000http://www.webpronews.com/?p=420647It remains to be seen just how popular Apple Watch will be, but there’s no question that that the era of wearables is here, and a lot of developers are rushing to get in the game and prepare for the next wave of devices. With these new screens comes new design and development challenges.

DataArt is a technology consulting firm that builds custom software and apps for its clients, and has been building out apps for wearables for a while. At the Wearable Technology Show in London this month, they demoed a Fatigue Checker smartwatch app for the Motorola Moto 360 and a Betting Prototype app for Apple Watch and Android Wear. The former helps users check how tired they are based on a quick test that measures user attention and accuracy of speech. The latter enables sports betting operators to offer bettors instant access to fixture, live and results data as well as personalized betting options.

We had a conversation with Denis Margolin, VP of Mobile Solutions for the company, who spoke about the challenges and considerations of building apps for smart watches, including the new Apple Watch, and other wearables.

How many apps have you developed for wearable devices?

Denis Margolin: We have a half dozen or so customer applications in the wild, mainly white labeled for our customers. These range from healthcare apps (such as a heartrate monitor, distance tracker and an app that uses voice to identify levels of fatigue) through screen capture and even an app that controls IoT enabled devices in a smart home.

Which devices have you specifically designed apps for?

DM: We have a variety of hardware we’ve built for. On the Android side, the LG G Watch R, Moto 360 and Samsung Gear Live. We’ve also built for the Apple Watch, using the Apple Watch Simulator

What is the biggest challenge in developing for a super small screen size?

Wearables like smart watches represent a shift in design; apps that require lots of user attention, which is typically the goal of most apps, are doomed to fail on the smart watch. And this isn’t a problem with the current generation of smart watches, it’s a feature of their design. Consider a service like Instagram; for an Instagram smart watch app to be effective, maybe it controls the camera (click a button to take a picture) as opposed to letting users view each other’s feeds. Uber’s approach, you click a button and a car arrives, is among the better designed for smart watches.

Editor’s note: Based on what we saw in Apple’s recent demo, the Instagram app does let you scroll through feeds.

What are some other challenges?

DM: Wearables are so much more personal than phones or tablets. To begin with, they’re not “with” the user, they’re “on” the user. In order to effectively consider how people interact with their wearables, we need to provide more customizable notifications, resolutions, and UI flow. Whereas “zooming in” can be effective for a phone, there is so little screen space on a smart watch that one can only zoom so far before text becomes too tedious to read (no one wants to scroll every other word). We also need to find logical places to split a typical UI into multiple pieces; designing for wearables requires that we don’t put everything on one screen.

DataSync setup, proper data exchange architecture, and animations, are among other concerns. Even when considering first generation smart watches (with black and white screens), we see a very fragmented market right now, with multiple companies looking to expand capabilities, and no real standards in place.

Are there certain types of apps you’d advise not bothering to develop for a smart watch?

DM: While they’re possible to build, 3D First Person Shooters would be among apps we’d not consider building. In time, could a Google Glass-like device to tether with a smart watch and allow augmented reality shooters? Sure, and children of the 80’s can think of this like Lasertag without the vests. But for now, it’s about making apps that people use quickly, and then disengage.

What are some challenges that are unique to developing for Apple Watch compared to other smart watches?

DM: Again, the side-by-side layout is a challenge, because it requires one to identify logical break points. The first generation also lacks the ability to change layouts in runtime, has some animation limitations, and doesn’t allow developers to navigate styles.

What are some challenges in developing for Apple Watch compared to other Apple devices beyond the screen size factor?

DM: While usability and a new technology are important factors to consider, they are rather easy to master for a professional team and are not a serious setback. In our opinion, the hardest challenge is to understand and master the new interaction paradigm. Smart watches are unlike any other device in terms of how it interacts with the user. Traditionally, you would want to create an app that would capture [the] user’s attention and keep him busy as long as possible.

However, smart watch apps should work in a completely opposite fashion, requiring as little attention as possible, providing only the most important information and only when it’s crucial. In this regard, smart watch apps are almost anti-apps that require the developer to forget the very instincts he or she has relied on for years. Instead of retaining users, we need to let them go as soon as we can, and we should focus on predicting the user behavior to provide him with contextual information.

What wearable in your experience has been the easiest to develop for and why?

DM: AndroidWear devices with square screens, like Samsung Gear Live and Asus ZenWatch, are among the easier devices to build for. This is because we don’t have to adopt for 2 screen factors. There is a lot of crossover between these devices and classic Android devices.

Do you expect Apple Watch to be a big success?

DM: We expect sales numbers to be higher than for competing devices due to the marketing efforts on Apple’s behalf, smart positioning in the fashion sector, and slightly better looks. However, we also expect the abandonment rate for Apple watch to be just as high as for any competitor, which means most of the users will stop using the gadget entirely in the first 6 months.

Unlike other Apple products, the Apple watch does not yet offer a clear advantage over competing products, so we may expect its market performance wouldn’t be much different.

However, we expect the next generation to be much more successful if Apple would integrate better sensors and open the road for professional health monitoring apps. At the moment, smart watches lack a killer use case that would justify their existence, that’s why abandonment rate is so high. Health monitoring might be such a use case.

]]>http://www.webpronews.com/app-developer-on-designing-apps-for-apple-watch-other-wearables-2015-03/feed0Infobright Internet Of Things Database Joins ThingWorx Partner Programhttp://www.webpronews.com/infobright-internet-of-things-database-joins-thingworx-partner-program-2015-03
http://www.webpronews.com/infobright-internet-of-things-database-joins-thingworx-partner-program-2015-03#commentsThu, 19 Mar 2015 15:45:22 +0000http://www.webpronews.com/?p=420637Internet of Things database analytics platform provider Infobright announced that it has joined the ThingWorx Ready partner program, which enables hardware and software companies to integrate products to make it easier to create and deploy Internet of Things solutions.

As part of the program, Infobright is now providing IoT and machine-to-machine app developers with an analytic database that can be used by apps built on the ThingWorx IoT platform. As a result, developers can store, manage, and analyze large volumes of machine data being generated by IoT apps.

“We are thrilled to be part of the ThingWorx Ready Partner program to help power the data analytics needs of solution providers as the IoT prepares to explode into a reality,” said Infobright CEO Don DeLoach. “ThingWorx is rapidly expanding their IoT platform ecosystem. Infobright brings unique, value added capabilities, such as in-stream creation and exploitation of metadata. This allows for scalable and cost effective storage of massive amounts of IoT and M2M data. There are no brute force hardware and administrative requirements that you see with more general purpose solutions, giving solution developers and data scientists the ability to take the Internet of Things from the possible to the practical.”

“Infobright complements the ThingWorx IoT platform by simplifying the data pipeline. As the Internet of Things continues its exponential growth, Infobright delivers the integral analytics piece of the puzzle to aid in the designing, building, and running of M2M and IoT applications,” said Chris Kuntz, VP of Ecosystem Programs at ThingWorx. “With Infobright, customers can now benefit from extremely fast ad-hoc query capability. Customers no longer have to worry about the nuts and bolts that go into data analysis and instead can focus on extracting valuable intelligence from their data sets.”

InfoBright Enterprise Edition is embedded in hundreds of applications, and according to the company, reaches almost every telecom service provider and Fortune 1000 enterprise.

Image via ThingWorx

]]>http://www.webpronews.com/infobright-internet-of-things-database-joins-thingworx-partner-program-2015-03/feed0Android Developers Must Now Get Ratings For Their Apps And Gameshttp://www.webpronews.com/android-developers-must-now-get-ratings-for-their-apps-and-games-2015-03
http://www.webpronews.com/android-developers-must-now-get-ratings-for-their-apps-and-games-2015-03#commentsWed, 18 Mar 2015 13:42:24 +0000http://www.webpronews.com/?p=420494]]>Google announced a couple of updates for Google Play, which will affect both developers and users. There’s a new content rating system as well as a new app review process.

The content rating system is based on age, and applies to both apps and games. According to the company, it will help developers communicate “familiar and locally relevant” content ratings to users while also helping to improve app discovery.

“We know that people in different countries have different ideas about what content is appropriate for kids, teens and adults, so today’s announcement will help developers better label their apps for the right audience,” says product manager Eunice Kim.

Developers can fill out a rating questionnaire for their apps and games, and they’ll get an “objective” content rating. It will be interesting to see if this actually hurts some apps. Just ask filmmakers how they feel about the MPAA rating system. If a developer doesn’t immediately complete the questionnaire, their apps will be listed as unrated, and that can lead to them being blocked some places and for some users. Beginning in May, all apps and updates of existing apps will require the questionnaire be completed to be published on Google Play.

“Google Play’s new rating system includes official ratings from the International Age Rating Coalition (IARC) and its participating bodies, including the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), Pan-European Game Information (PEGI), Australian Classification Board, Unterhaltungssoftware Selbstkontrolle (USK) and Classificação Indicativa (ClassInd),” Kim explains. “Territories not covered by a specific ratings authority will display an age-based, generic rating. The process is quick, automated and free to developers. In the coming weeks, consumers worldwide will begin to see these new ratings in their local markets.”

To complete the questionnaire, just sign into the Developer Console.

Regarding the app review process, Google started reviewing them before they’re published on Google Play a few months ago. The company says this is a better way to protect users and improve its catalog. Google has a team of “experts,” who spot violations of Android’s developer policies earlier on.

“We value the rapid innovation and iteration that is unique to Google Play, and will continue to help developers get their products to market within a matter of hours after submission, rather than days or weeks,” says Kim. “In fact, there has been no noticeable change for developers during the rollout.”

Google has now added improvements to how it handles publishing status, so developers can better see why apps are rejected or suspended, and can take care of the issues and resubmit. This goes for “minor” policy violations, Google says.

The company claims it has paid over $7 billion to developers.

Last month, Google announced paid search results on Google Play, which will definitely help with app discovery (while giving the company another revenue stream). Of course this only available to a limited set of users from a pilot group of advertisers for the time being. It remains to be seen if and when (most likely when) this will become available on a broader scale.

According to the company, the feature increases website and app performance by making it safe to cache data that frequently changes. This goes for things like shopping cart and user profile information for ecommerce apps.

The software tracks data changes to invalidate a cache entry so outdated data isn’t served. The company says it also provides the ability to handle more workload, reducing page download speeds and increasing site performance while protecting data.

“ScaleArc’s auto cache invalidation capability was recently put to the test through an extensive evaluation program conducted by a leading eCommerce company,” said ScaleArc. “The company tested the feature across two query sizes, measuring the query-per-second (QPS) rate and response time both with and without ScaleArc’s database load balancing software. Throughout the testing, the company observed that response time with ScaleArc’s software increased 6x to 12x, depending on the query response size.”

“For any company conducting business online, poor website or application performance can result in users failing to complete a transaction or abandoning the eCommerce site all together,” added CEO Justin Barney. “With ScaleArc’s database load balancing software and automatic cache invalidation, companies can now cache data that was previously believed to be too risky to cache. By now making this data safe to cache, ScaleArc can bolster business for companies with dynamic data, by reducing their page download times and increasing their overall site availability.”

In addition to shopping cart data and user profile data, ScaleArc says Financial data is a predominant use case for auto cache invalidation.

The load balancing software is available for SQL Server, MySQL, and Oracle. More here.

Zend Framework 3 includes a new design, which the company says takes advantage of the PHP language evolution, as well as emerging technologies and techniques. The highlights and capabilities as listed in the announcement are as follows:

A new modern middleware-based runtime as a lighter weight, high-performance alternative to enterprise MVC frameworks

Apigility, Zend’s API Builder, will be delivered on top of the new middleware stack for better performance and simplicity, with the same streamlined, powerful user experience

Optimization for PHP 7, while still supporting PHP 5.5 and up

“The PHP ecosystem is undergoing a ‘renaissance’ with a multitude of development processes, new technologies and coding practice changes in the last few years,” said Zend’s Matthew Weier O’Phinney. “The latest Zend Framework will change how developers work with PHP, providing them with a ‘use-at-will’ architecture option as well as a framework that aligns with ever-changing platforms and technologies. This ensures developers have the specific components they need to create the next-generation of high-performance PHP-based web and mobile applications for the enterprise.”

Zend Framework 3 will be available the third quarter of this year.

Zend Framework is licensed under a new BSD open-source license. Companies like IBM, Google and Microsoft have contributed to it.

]]>http://www.webpronews.com/zend-framework-3-roadmap-announced-2015-03/feed0Amazon Web Services Announces CloudFront Signed Cookieshttp://www.webpronews.com/amazon-web-services-announces-cloudfront-signed-cookies-2015-03
http://www.webpronews.com/amazon-web-services-announces-cloudfront-signed-cookies-2015-03#commentsFri, 13 Mar 2015 17:31:38 +0000http://www.webpronews.com/?p=420023Amazon Web Services announced that Amazon CloudFront now gives users CloudFront signed HTTP cookies to secure private content. Whereas before, you’d control who could access CloudFront content using a custom signature for each objectURL, you can now include the signature in an HTTP cookie.

According to the company, this enables you to restrict access to multiple objects (such as whole site authentication) or to a single object without having to change URLs.

“Signed HTTP cookies make it easy to restrict viewer access to your streaming media content,” says senior product manager Omid Behzadian. “For example, if your media content is in HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) format, you can use Amazon Elastic Transcoder or your media server to generate the playlist and media segments. You then write your web application to authenticate each user and to send a Set-Cookie header that sets a cookie on the user’s device. When a user requests a restricted object, the browser forwards the signed cookie in the request, and CloudFront checks the cookie attributes to determine whether to allow or restrict access to the HLS stream. CloudFront checks for this cookie when the player requests the playlist and when the player requests each segment, which ensures that the end-to-end stream is secured.”

“This is a nice addition to AWS’ growing portfolio of security features targeted for media delivery,” adds Behzadian. “You may remember that Amazon Elastic Transcoder released HLS Content Protection earlier this year. Also, be sure to check out a recording of the Secure Media Streaming and Delivery Session at re:Invent for tips on architecting an end-to-end secure media solution on AWS.”

Using private content with CloudFront does not mean extra charges.

The company will be providing a CloudFront office hours on March 26, where it will be demoing CloudFront Signed Cookies. You can sign up for that here if you like.

In other Amazon Web Services news, the company confirmed that it has acquired 2lemetry, an Internet-of-Things startup that has a system for sending, receiving, and analyzing connected devices.

]]>http://www.webpronews.com/amazon-web-services-announces-cloudfront-signed-cookies-2015-03/feed0Google Deprecates Old Webmaster Tools APIhttp://www.webpronews.com/google-deprecates-old-webmaster-tools-api-2015-03
http://www.webpronews.com/google-deprecates-old-webmaster-tools-api-2015-03#commentsFri, 13 Mar 2015 15:28:47 +0000http://www.webpronews.com/?p=419999Back in September, Google launched an update to its Webmaster Tools API to make it more consistent with other Google APIs. Those using other APIs from the company would find the new one easier to implement, the company said.

Now, Google has announced that with the pending shutdown of ClientLogin, the old version will be shut down on April 20.

“If you’re still using the old API, getting started with the new one is fairly easy,” says Google webmaster trends analyst John Mueller. “The new API covers everything from the old version except for messages and keywords. We have examples in Python, Java, as well as OACurl (for command-line fans & quick testing). Additionally, there’s the Site Verification API to add sites programmatically to your account. The Python search query data download will continue to be available for the moment, and replaced by an API in the upcoming quarters.”

When it introduced the new API, Google said it made it easier to authenticate apps or web services, and provided access to some of the main Webmaster Tools features. These are some specific things you can do with it:

list, add, or remove sites from your account (you can currently have up to 500 sites in your account)

list, add, or remove sitemaps for your websites

get warning, error, and indexed counts for individual sitemaps

get a time-series of all kinds of crawl errors for your site

list crawl error samples for specific types of errors

mark individual crawl errors as “fixed” (this doesn’t change how they’re processed, but can help simplify the UI for you)

You can find the links for the Python, Java, and OACurl examples here.

]]>http://www.webpronews.com/google-deprecates-old-webmaster-tools-api-2015-03/feed0C++ Popularity Up Slightly, Programmers Debate Its Meritshttp://www.webpronews.com/c-popularity-up-slightly-programmers-debate-its-merits-2015-03
http://www.webpronews.com/c-popularity-up-slightly-programmers-debate-its-merits-2015-03#commentsThu, 12 Mar 2015 20:38:33 +0000http://www.webpronews.com/?p=419932Despite having shown signs of decline, the C programming language family continues to hold some of the most popular languages. C continues to hold the top spot, followed by Java, then Objective-C, C++, and C#.

Out of these top five languages (according to TIOBE Index for this month), C++ is the only one that’s seen a positive change.

As TIOBE.com says, “The TIOBE Programming Community index is an indicator of the popularity of programming languages. The index is updated once a month. The ratings are based on the number of skilled engineers world-wide, courses and third party vendors. Popular search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo!, Wikipedia, Amazon, YouTube and Baidu are used to calculate the ratings. It is important to note that the TIOBE index is not about the best programming language or the language in which most lines of code have been written.”

C++ has been around since 1983, and while it’s still the fourth most popular language, its validity continues to be a contentious subject. From Slashdot:

Perhaps the most famous rant against C++ came from none other than Linus Torvalds in 2007. “C++ is a horrible language,” he wrote, for starters. “It’s made more horrible by the fact that a lot of substandard programmers use it, to the point where it’s much much easier to generate total and utter crap with it.” He’s not alone: A lot of developers dislike how much C++ can do “behind the scenes” with STL and Boost, leading to potential instability and inefficiency. And yet there’s still demand for C++ out there. Over at Dice, Jeff Cogswell argues that C++ doesn’t deserve the hatred. “I’ve witnessed a lot of ‘over-engineering’ in my life, wherein people would write reusable classes with several layers of inheritance, even though the reusable class wasn’t actually used more than once,” he wrote. “But I would argue that’s the exception, not the norm; when done right, generic programming and other high-level aspects of C++ can provide enormous benefits.” Was Linus going overboard?

This sparked a big discussion on the site. The top comment suggests the main problem with C++ is that it’s too easy to write write-only code, and then everyone programs in different dialects, and has a hard time figuring out other people’s code.

There are a lot of interesting points made throughout the discussion, so be sure to peruse that.